Religion & American Law

According to TheCaucus, The Politics and Government Blog of the Times many of the Republican presidential candidates are supporting something referred to as the “personhood amendment.”  This is an amendment designed to fight Roe V. Wade by declaring that an embryo is a person from the point of fertilization.  The article offers the name of several candidates that had agreed to sign onto the bill by December 22^nd of 2011 along with several Christian groups that are supporting the candidates in question.

I believe this proposes a multifaceted issue.  On the one hand you have various Christian groups fighting what they view as the murder of unborn children protected by the secularization of society, an argument that is nearly the reverse of what early American’s argued when it came to too much religious freedom.  In contrast to them you have women that do not see it as murder and want the right to regulate their bodies.  Somewhere between the two you have the groups that may see it as murder, but know that it will cost them any ground they have currently to support such an extreme position. 

The issue is not a completely religious issue though.  According to the Times article some of the candidates are “polishing and trumpeting their credentials as Christian conservatives in their efforts to be seen as the leading Not Romney.”  If the author is correct and this is in a large part less about belief and more about pushing themselves forward in the polls it leads me to wonder if they really know the ramifications of what they are trying to get pushed into law. Even in Mississippi the push to bring this amendment from the drafting board to actual law was met with resistance that spelled its defeat.  Before the vote doctors relayed the information that the bill would not only ban abortions, but could also ban some forms of contraception and cause problems with fertilization clinics. 

Has religion became a currency that our would be leaders use to buy their positions of power like the author suggests or do they truly believe that an amendment that drastically reduces women’s access to birth control is needed for the country.  It’s a hard question to answer when politics, religion, and law all blend into each other.  It’s hard to tell if they really do care about the fertilized embryos or if they are just trying to draw attention to how Christian they are in order to differentiate themselves from Romany who is Mormon.  What we can see though is that this is a potential new law with far reaching implications in the religious and health worlds.  

Further information: http://www.personhoodusa.com/blog/personhood-republican-presidential-candidate-pledge